The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque Masterpiece

One autumn evening, not long after ending a stint as a pop music critic, Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites. There, something unlikely happened: he fell deeply in love with the music. So began a quest that would unravel three centuries of mystery, intrigue, history, politics, and passion.

Part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the first features Bach and the missing manuscript of these mesmerisingly beautiful eighteenth-century pieces for solo cello; the next, the legendary cellist Pablo Casals and the historic discovery of the music in Spain in the late nineteenth century; and the last, Eric Siblin's own infatuation with the suites in the twenty-first century.

This love affair leads Siblin to the back streets of Barcelona and a Belgian mansion; to interviews with world-renowned cellists; to archives, festivals, and conferences; and even to cello lessons - all in pursuit of answers to the mysteries that continue to haunt this music more than 250 years after its composer's death.

The Cello Suites is a lovingly written, true-life journey of discovery, fuelled by the transcendent power of a musical masterpiece.